Leonard Bernstein's Omnibus: The Historic Television Broadcasts

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All Rise...

Judge Jim Thomas doesn't ride the Omnibus; he has his own Omnicar.

The Charge

And a one-a, and a two-a…

The Case

One of the early forays into educational television was Omnibus, which
was broadcast, somewhat sporadically, from 1952 until 1961. The show, hosted by
Alistair Cooke, wanted to bring great diversity to its audience. The first
installment, for instance, featured Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer as Henry VIII
and Anne Boleyn; William Saroyan narrating an adaptation of his short story
"The Bad Men"; and the first images of X-ray movies: an inside look at
the working human digestive system.

When the producers wanted to do something with classical music, they
approached Leonard Bernstein, who in his mid-thirties was already making a name
for himself as a composer and a conductor. Bernstein did seven episodes of
Omnibus; Leonard Bernstein's Omnibus: The Historic Television
Broadcasts includes all seven:

His first episode, on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, is easily the strongest of
the lot. Actually, the subject isn't even the Fifth Symphony, but only the first
movement. Narrowing the focus event further, Bernstein goes into Beethoven's
notebooks and gets some of the themes and motifs that Beethoven had composed for
the symphony, but eventually rejected. Bernstein plays the motif on piano, then
has the orchestra play the section with the motif worked in, and then he talks
about why Beethoven probably rejected that material. By working those rejected
motifs back into the symphony, Bernstein effectively demonstrates how the
symphony works. The episode also has some great visuals, including the symphonic
score painted on the floor so that Bernstein can walk around the score pointing
things out, instead of pointing to a cramped score.

Stuff like that make the episodes work; he uses some charts to illustrate
how J.S. Bach's music works as well, but sadly, they don't go to the Score on
the Floor again; that would have been fun.

Bernstein tends to wander into quicksand with the broader topics, though.
"The World of Jazz" in particular is just a bit more than can be
covered in a little over an hour. Bernstein lays out the technical differences
between classical music and jazz nicely (I now know what a "blue note"
is); but the more ephemeral differences fall by the wayside. The problem of
scope also hampers the episode on modern music, but he takes a more linear
approach that presents modern music part of a natural progression.

Of all the episodes, the hardest sell is certainly "What Makes Opera
Grand?" Bernstein claims that opera is populist because it is so direct.
Well, yes and no. It certainly was in the time of, say Mozart and Strauss,
because they wrote their opera for the languages of their times and places. When
those same operas face an American audience, the language barrier, by
definition, makes them less direct. That's an issue Bernstein never quite
manages to finesse. He ultimately claims that the sheer power of operatic music
allows it to transcend the limits of language, so that you only need to have a
rough idea of what is happening. In the best of operas—say, Mozart's
Don Giovanni—I might be convinced, but that's more a function of
the composer's genius than the operatic form itself.

The episode on musical comedy is rather odd in that it spends a lot
of time discussing the difference between a musical comedy and operetta, to the
point that one could argue that the musical comedy is getting the short end of
the stick. Bernstein's fascination with the operetta is understandable, though,
when you realize that at the time, the premiere of Bernstein's operetta
Candide was only months away.

Trivia: A young Carol Burnett is one of the singers in "American
Musical Comedy."

Bernstein himself comes across as a fairly likable guy; he wants to help us
understand music better, and clearly spent a lot of time considering how to
present the material. At times he comes across as a bit self-serving,
particularly in the episode on conducting. It's an odd episode in general, as
it's as much an intro to music as it is to conducting. It's funny that he spends
a fair amount of time demonstrating how to conduct the various time signatures,
particularly since his demonstration bears little resemblance to his own
flamboyant conducting style. Once he gets into the meat of conducting,
though—that is, the process of interpreting the score—it's quite
fascinating, if all too brief.

Video…sucks (but then, you probably figured that out from the screen
shots). Granted, we are talking about fifty-plus-year-old video, but it's still
pretty bad: blotchy, soft, inconsistent. Audio is somewhat pinched but
relatively clear—though there are occasionally patches of static,
particularly in the episodes on modern music and opera. As a bonus, the disc
includes an Omnibus Christmas performance of Bernstein conducting
Handel's Messiah. It's just the performance, without any analysis or
commentary, which is why it's considered an extra. Be forewarned—there is
a quick panning shot from the orchestra to the chorus that will leave you
scrambling for Dramamine.

The Verdict

This is a curious collection. On the one hand, the educational value may be
marginal, and it is, shall we say, technically challenged. On the other, it has
a fair amount of historical value—as an important piece of the golden age
of television, as an artifact of Bernstein's early career, and as the precursor
to the broadcasts of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. Even in the weaker
episodes, Bernstein's passion for the music—and for sharing that
passion—comes through with the force of a Mozart aria.

Not guilty.

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